I’m Done With Unrequited Love - Chapter 18

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Episode 18
There is a wine cellar beneath the Annex.
I retrieved three bottles of hundred-year-old wine without hesitation.
Blood-dark liquid poured into the glass.
Clink—
Two glasses collided in midair.
The weather hadn’t yet turned to spring, and it was cold. I simply left my hair down.
“Aren’t you cold?”
“I don’t mind the cold much.”
“I was thinking of suggesting you grow your hair out.”
“Long hair doesn’t appeal to me.”
“Ah. So you don’t like me either? I wish I’d cut mine before giving up.”
“That’s quite a leap.”
Two empty wine bottles sat on the table, along with one unopened bottle.
Which is to say, I was drunk out of my mind.
I couldn’t even remember when I’d drunk so much.
Ernan, meanwhile, had drunk just as much as I had, yet he seemed perfectly lucid. Why was that?
“Fidellia.”
“What?”
“Do you still love me?”
……
I lifted my heavy head to meet Ernan’s gaze.
The crimson light illuminating the room reflected in his eyes, casting them in an enigmatic hue.
But looking at his eyes, I could never quite fathom what he was thinking.
I opened my mouth and answered.
“Yes.”
……
“Then why?”
I drained the wine that remained in my glass.
It was sweet.
And bitter.
“I won’t confess to you anymore.”
I tilted the wine bottle toward my glass, pouring out what was left until it was nearly full.
Propriety be damned.
“So you said you wouldn’t like me anymore.”
“Yes. That’s why I won’t confess.”
Didn’t he understand?
“You took my words so literally…… Love isn’t something you can simply set aside like that. It doesn’t work by force of will.”
“I know.”
“……You know?”
A laugh escaped me and I hung my head.
“Is this what someone who knows looks like?”
I snickered for a while, then suddenly wiped all expression from my face. There was nothing left to laugh about.
“How nice it must be to know so much.”
“It’s not.”
“No. I find knowing things annoying too.”
“What do you know?”
“Everything you don’t.”
This world’s future—which was a book’s story—the children’s futures, Ernan’s future, my own future. That we’re all going to die.
“That’s a genuinely tragic premise.”
I watched my reflection in the blood-dark wine.
“It’s a question you asked me before.”
“Tell me.”
“If I were to fall ill and die—what would you do?”
……
“Would you still not accept me?”
The moment the words left my mouth, something felt off, and I furrowed my brow.
“No, that’s too forward-looking a question.”
……
“If I had told you I was going to fall ill and die, would you still not have accepted me?”
My head was spinning. I pressed my fingers to my temple and stared down at the table.
I wanted nothing more than to collapse right here. My head kept drooping.
“Then let’s say I did.”
……
“My feelings don’t change.”
From the corner of my vision, I saw Ernan lift his glass.
Ah, I wanted to laugh. I couldn’t help it.
But I didn’t want to laugh.
“Find another man.”
“I won’t. It might contradict what you believe, but love isn’t forgotten through love. It’s forgotten through something else.”
“Then what?”
“Even I’m not sure.”
Ernan set down his glass.
“Now it’s my turn to ask.”
“Go ahead.”
“The same question. If I fell ill and died. And before that death, my last wish was to have you.”
“You’re asking if I would have accepted?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve always asked pointless questions.”
I lifted my glass and took several slow sips. When I spoke, my voice was steady.
“Of course I would have.”
……
“That’s a truly pointless question. Did you forget what I think of you?”
I said I loved you.
You may not understand, but I’ve already resolved myself to all of this before I pursued you.
Yet Ernan did not seem convinced.
“You’d be left alone if I died.”
“I’ve watched you for years now, and you still don’t know me. I’m not someone who would fear that.”
I clicked my tongue and drained half the wine in my glass. Then I leaned back against the chair.
……Wait.
After a moment of silence, I opened my mouth slowly.
“I just thought of a rather brilliant hypothesis.”
“What is it?”
It’s this.
“You like me…… but you won’t accept me because you have a Terminal Condition.”
……
Our eyes met across the empty space.
A short laugh escaped me.
But a hypothesis remains only a hypothesis.
What’s certain is that there’s no love in those eyes.
“Even if that were true, I have no intention of taking you back.”
“……Why not?”
“If you like someone yet reject them, there must be a reason. If something can’t be, there’s a reason it can’t. People live within civilization, so there are countless things to consider. Do you know Romeo and Juliet?”
Romeo and Juliet is the Romeo and Juliet of this world. The author was Shakespeare, I think.
Besides, though I haven’t said it, I too have become Terminal now.
Isn’t it absurd for two people who will soon die to love each other?
“Even if you suddenly said you loved me, it wouldn’t matter. Unless you called it your last wish before death, as you put it. The train has already left the station…… Now we’re standing on opposite platforms, looking at each other across the tracks. Do you understand what I mean?”
I held up my index fingers on both hands. The space between them was vast.
“Even if the train comes again, we can’t board it together.”
……
“I don’t agree that love is forgotten through love, but I do believe that love is about timing…….”
My vision blurred.
‘I can’t seem to keep my head together.’
This is exactly the right moment to lose consciousness.
Love is timing. Fainting is timing.
I drained the last of the wine in my glass and set the empty cup down.
“When I pass out, move me to the adjoining room, would you? Not Rene’s room.”
Ernan stared at me for a long moment, then asked flatly.
“Are you all right?”
“What…… Oh.”
That thing.
“When I’m asleep, it doesn’t bother me. I wouldn’t even know.”
Ernan nodded.
“As you wish.”
Then consciousness slipped away.
* * *
The next morning, I woke in the room next to Rene’s.
Though calling it morning was a stretch—it was closer to dawn, pale light just beginning to seep through the window.
I tied my hair back haphazardly and made my way to the Research Room.
Ever since Kiara had taken her sulk, I’d been sleeping and eating in the Research Room, so I kept a change of clothes there as well.
The simple cot where I usually slept was there too, but since no one but me was allowed inside that room, Ernan had no choice but to put me up in an empty guest room.
‘If anyone found out what I was researching, that would be the end of it.’
A woman with a doctorate in biology, now obsessed with pharmacy—hardly inconspicuous, was it?
I unlocked the Research Room door and went inside, washed, and changed into fresh clothes.
The Annex was deathly quiet.
‘Ernan must still be asleep.’
Everyone who needed to know already knew that he suffered from chronic insomnia.
‘He said he just does paperwork on those nights.’
That was likely how he’d managed to keep his estates and businesses afloat despite practically living at banquets and parties.
His aide Louie, meanwhile, worried himself sick over it all.
‘How did he end up as Ernan’s aide, anyway?’
If you looked at it from Louie’s perspective, he wasn’t so different from the aide of some male protagonist who shirked his duties to gallivant with his heroine.
The difference being that Ernan needed no heroine—he was a solitary wanderer doing exactly as he pleased.
Despite looking like he’d never dream of it, Ernan genuinely loved crowds.
‘Though he hates excessive socializing.’
There was hardly a more finicky person alive.
I spent the time until Rene woke boiling and cooling a medicinal root over and over, then checked the clock and stood.
When I entered Rene’s room, she was sitting on the bed, just awake, rubbing her eyes. She seemed to be struggling to shake off her drowsiness.
“Go wash up and then we’ll have breakfast.”
“Yes…”
I fetched some water from the bathroom and set it before her.
After Rene splashed her face and I handed her a towel, I was turning back toward the bathroom when—
“Um, um. Fidellia?”
Rene caught hold of my collar.
I turned back toward the child, puzzled.
I watched to see what she wanted to say, but Rene hesitated, unable to speak easily.
“What is it?”
“It’s… that…”
What could it be?
I set the wash water down on the nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed.
“It’s all right. Speak freely. I’ll wait.”
“Um, Ki, Kiara… you know.”
Kiara.
I was quite taken aback internally.
I hadn’t expected that name to come from the child’s lips.
“I… I want to… want to meet her.”
“…Kiara? Why?”
“I’ve never… seen someone my own age before… I want to be friends.”
It was quite a reasonable request.
I was almost grateful that she could speak so warmly of Kiara, who had made her cry by being so forceful at their first meeting.
‘Of course I want them to get along too, but…’
Kiara had shut the doors of her heart tight.
It had already been three days since she’d skipped breakfast.
I’d been going to her every day to coax her, but Kiara still wouldn’t even pretend to listen to me.
The difficulty of it all was beyond measure.
“Hmm… All right, I’ll do my best to persuade Kiara. She’s still in a huff, you see. She was upset that I didn’t tell her about you.”
Rene nodded eagerly.
“I… I understand.”
“You do?”
“Because… you said that happened to you too.”
Sister?
“Who are you…… Ah.”
The legitimate daughter of the Count and Countess of the Flora Family.
I found myself caught in an odd sensation.
‘So they weren’t on bad terms after all.’
She’d clearly suffered abuse within the Flora Family.
And it was obvious she’d fled because of it.
‘But perhaps this sister was the exception.’
It was possible.
Every organization occasionally produced such anomalies.
Not my concern to dwell on.
I turned my head to check the clock. Hmm, this should work.
“There’s still some time before the meal. I’ll go tell her to come down to the Dining Room without fail today. Can you wait here?”
“Sure. Ernan’s here too…….”
That man was probably in dreamland right now.
He’d mentioned that a glass of wine helped him drift off into a light sleep.
I rose from my seat.
When I said I’d go see Kiara at once, Rene broke into a bright smile.
Her face alight with anticipation.
* * *
The incident occurred several hours later.
“……Rene? What’s all this about, suddenly…….”
Red welts began to spread across Rene’s skin.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————